A domain name service (DNS) server is employed to, among other things, resolve a fully quantified domain name (FQDN) to an Internet Protocol (IP) address. For example, a client application, such as a browser, running on a host computer might receive input from a user when the user selects a link on a webpage. The link is associated with content that the user would like to access, but the content might be stored on a remote server. In order for the browser to obtain the content from the remote server, the browser must first obtain an IP address corresponding to the remote server. In this regard, a DNS server is configured to resolve a given FQDN provided in a DNS request, and received from the client application, to a corresponding IP address. The corresponding IP address is then returned to the browser from the DNS server in a DNS response.
DNS servers can also receive DNS requests from clients other than a browser application. For example, an email server, an accounting application, or a web security application, among others, might also have a need to resolve a domain name to an IP address, or vice versa.